Reliving a Masterpiece: David Foster Wallace, Michael Joyce, and the Psychology of Tennis

Summary

Podcast Summary: Pablo Torre Finds Out

Episode Title: Reliving a Masterpiece: David Foster Wallace, Michael Joyce, and the Psychology of Tennis
Host: Pablo Torre
Guest: Michael Joyce (Former pro tennis player, subject of David Foster Wallace’s essay "The String Theory")
Date: September 3, 2024

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Overview

This episode is an in-depth exploration of David Foster Wallace’s legendary tennis essay “The String Theory” through an intimate conversation with Michael Joyce, the essay’s central subject. Host Pablo Torre traces the connections between athlete and author, fame and obscurity, artistry and sacrifice, and the solitary psychology required by both elite tennis and elite writing. The episode blends dry wit, personal anecdotes, and moving reflections on mental health, sports ambition, and what it means to be seen (and transformed) through another’s genius.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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Meeting David Foster Wallace: Behind The Masterpiece

(05:17–11:22)

• Michael Joyce recounts meeting Wallace during the Montreal qualifying rounds:

  “I saw this guy kind of sitting, like, on the side with, like, leg warmers and, like, a snow cap…you’re playing, you can kind of see who’s around, if not a ton of people to watch you.” (06:28, Joyce)

• Wallace’s curiosity was piqued by Joyce being talented but not famous—a recurring DFW theme: the exceptional but anonymous.
• Joyce’s initial impressions: Wallace appeared eccentric and detached, but keenly observant.
• Wallace followed Joyce on the tour, including meals, without making it feel like an interview.

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The Experience of Being Profiled

(10:45–13:38)

• Joyce didn’t initially enjoy the profile, feeling exposed by Wallace’s unvarnished psychological analysis:

  “At the time when it came out, I really didn’t like it…He comes with like four pages of talking about me being a virgin and stuff. Which actually worked out pretty good at the time because all the girls that read it were like, you know, hey, let’s, let’s take care of this.” (11:09, Joyce)

• Wallace’s portrayal highlighted a key facet of sports psychology:

  “If I’m in like a bar and there’s a really good looking girl, I might be kind of nervous. But if there’s like a thousand gorgeous girls in the stands when I’m playing, it’s a different story.” (12:32, quoted by Torre from Wallace’s essay)

• Over time, Joyce came to appreciate the essay’s power, calling Wallace “amazing.”

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Life as a Tier-Below Superstar: The Crevice of Tennis

(14:26–19:18)

• Wallace’s humility in the essay: he wouldn’t hit tennis balls with Joyce, writing:

  “The idea of me playing Joyce…is now revealed to me to be in a certain way obscene.” (14:43, quoted by Torre from Wallace)

• Both men explore the vast psychological and ability gap between the very top and the merely exceptional, even when the difference seems minuscule from the outside.
• Tennis is uniquely lonely and unforgiving, with most fans underestimating the skill level of lesser-known pro players:

  “The ball doesn’t lie, they say. If you win matches, you’re gonna get up there. If you don’t, you probably not.” (19:18, Joyce)

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The Sacrifice and Strangeness of the Tennis Life

(20:00–23:52)

• Michael Joyce reflects on conflating his self-worth with performance—an urge shared by many pros:

  “It’s actually kind of sick…You’re training a child to understand that the happiness of his loved ones and, and their love for him is almost conditional on whether they’re winning or not.” (21:06, Torre)

• Wallace’s portrayal of Joyce as “effectless openness” being a form of authenticity, not stupidity:

  “[Joyce’s] effectless openness is not a sign of stupidity but of something else.” (22:51, Wallace via Torre)

• Joyce grew to value this radical honesty in both coaching and life.

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The Writer’s Genius: Describing Others & Himself

(24:35–27:54)

• The episode features readings of some of Wallace’s sharpest observations on players like McEnroe and Agassi to highlight his blend of literary grace and athletic insight:

  “Watching McEnroe don a blue polyester blazer and do stiff, lame, truistic color commentary for TV is like watching Faulkner do a Gap ad.” (24:35, Wallace via Torre) “Agassi’s domination of Washington…chills me as if I’m watching the devil play.” (25:21, Wallace via Torre)

• Joyce explains the near-invisible margins at the top of the sport—a hair’s breadth difference in perception, timing, and confidence:

  “…Sometimes it’s just you go with what’s your instinct, you know, you’re playing like, on automatic pilot kind of thing.” (26:39, Joyce)

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Living the Paradox: Embracing the Essay

(28:25–33:06)

• Joyce recalls learning the word “paradox” from the essay, initially stung by Wallace’s depiction of his “grotesque” single-mindedness:

  “I remember being in England…I think my parents faxed over the…so give me the story of you actually first getting this after he did the whole article.” (28:38, Torre—pivot to Joyce’s story)

• When Details magazine declined to publish “The String Theory” for being “too deep,” Esquire picked it up—ultimately, the essay grew famous posthumously (with the effect tripling after DFW’s death).
• Reflections on how the highly insular path to pro tennis generates both beauty and a warped, isolated sense of normalcy:

  “My life was normal…now that I look back, especially now I have an 8 year old daughter…do I want my daughter to play tennis? I really don’t.” (32:00, Joyce)

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After Tennis: Teaching, Coaching, and the DFW Afterlife

(35:01–39:45)

• Wallace never reconnected with Joyce despite living nearby in LA, preferring to keep his distance—Joyce interprets this as respect.
• “When he finally passed, when he passed away, I remember I was kind of, like, shocked…within like 12 hours, I had literally like 50 people contacting me because of him passing away. The article was thrown all over the Internet…” (38:11, Joyce)
• By the time of Wallace’s suicide, Joyce had transitioned to coaching Maria Sharapova—ironically more famous as a coach than as a player.

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The Twin Costs of Obsession: Tennis and Writing

(40:49–45:32)

• Both tennis and writing are shown as pursuits that can border on the grotesque in their demands but yield moments of transcendence.
• Wallace’s final years revealed his own struggles:

  “He couldn’t write anymore for whatever set of reasons. And if he can’t write…that wasn’t enough Velcro to keep him on the planet.” (44:19, Friend/Colleague of DFW)

• The last thing Wallace wrote was “Roger Federer as Religious Experience”—a tennis piece—again signifying tennis as his greatest metaphor.
• Wallace’s essay closed by describing Joyce as "a complete man…in a grotesquely limited way":

  “He will say he is happy and mean it. Wish him well.” (46:33, essay closing read by Torre)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (W/Timestamps)

• “If I’m in like a bar and there’s a really good looking girl, I might be kind of nervous. But if there’s like a thousand gorgeous girls in the stands when I’m playing, it’s a different story.” (12:32, Wallace via Torre quoting Joyce)
• “It’s actually kind of sick…You’re training a child to understand that the happiness of his loved ones and, and their love for him is almost conditional on whether they’re winning or not.” (21:06, Torre)
• “Watching McEnroe…is like watching Faulkner do a Gap ad.” (24:35, Wallace via Torre)
• “My life was normal…now that I look back, especially now I have an 8 year old daughter…do I want my daughter to play tennis? I really don’t.” (32:00, Joyce)
• “He will say he is happy and mean it. Wish him well.” (46:33, Wallace via Torre)

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Reflections on Greatness, Mental Health, and Transcendence

(46:33–49:30)

• Both host and guest admit, with a bittersweet tone, that the obsessions which fueled their greatness—Joyce in tennis, Wallace in writing—came at immense personal cost.
• The episode closes (49:26) yearning for Wallace’s voice as a commentator on modern topics (“pickleball!”), but ultimately offering sincere well-wishes for finding beauty and meaning in a demanding field.

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers a rich meditation on mastery, the psychological cost of greatness, and the way that extraordinary talent can illuminate the hidden worlds beneath the surface of professional sports—and life itself. Both somber and humorous, it gives listeners profound insight into what it means to matter—through tennis, writing, or simply being, and being seen.

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Recommended for:
Listeners interested in sports psychology, literary journalism, the unseen side of professional athletics, and admirers of David Foster Wallace’s work.

Listen if you:

• Enjoy deep, reflective conversations at the intersection of sports, culture, and art
• Want to understand the “invisible strivers” behind every major sport
• Are curious about how extraordinary writing can change the lives of ordinary people.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out I am Pablo Torre. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

[Michael Joyce]

Wimbledon is where I read it and I remember reading and I was like, what the is this?

[Pablo Torre]

Right after this ad.

[Michael Joyce]

You're listening to Giraffe Kings.

[Pablo Torre]

Michael Joyce, do you know why I summoned you into this room today?

[Michael Joyce]

A little bit. David Foster Wallace. Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. I've never done an episode like this where I'm like, let me talk to the subject of one of the greatest essays that has ever been written. And I was just curious at the start, like, how often does this happen where someone wants to talk to you about David Foster Wallace?

[Michael Joyce]

You'd be surprised a lot.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, so that actually does make sense to me. It does make sense that I would be far from the only person who has wanted to find out the story behind a masterpiece of writing. A masterpiece, by the way, that you don't need to have read in order to appreciate this episode. Although I do think that you need to meet our pair of disparate and, as you will see, cosmically connected characters. Because the subject of this piece, who is in studio with me today, is Michael Joyce, a pro tennis player in the 90s, whose relative anonymity is what drew the curiosity of the piece's author, the famously eccentric David Foster Wallace. An elusive genius and cripplingly self conscious criticism, and a guy that the New York Times once posthumously called the best mind of his generation. Wallace spent large portions of his life scrutinizing and playing one sport in particular, as he discussed with Charlie Rose in 1997.

[Interviewer/Commentator]

Do you still play tennis? I do play tennis. I no longer play competitively. You played as a junior and you were competitive and good? I was good. I was not even very good. I was between good and very good. I was good on a regional level. And one of the things about writing the piece about Michael Joyce, who was hundredth in the world and junior champion, is I really had to realize that there were a lot of levels beyond the level that I was on.

[Pablo Torre]

And that is where the relevant portion of this TV interview, which was ostensibly about Wallace's epic thousand page novel Infinite Jest, could have ended.

[Interviewer/Commentator]

But no, that essay for me, which I know you haven't asked me about and now I'm talking about, is ended up. It's very weird, and I'm surprised Esquire even bought it. It ended up being way more autobiographical than it did. It was supposed to. It was supposed to start as a profile this time, but it was about you. Yeah, unfortunately, a Lot of these, I think, end up being. I think so too, as a couple.

[Pablo Torre]

Back to David Esquire ran Wallace's essay titled the String Theory 30 Years Ago. Now it remains the funniest and most transcendent examination of tennis that I, and apparently many other people Michael Joyce encounters, have ever read. And so this week, in the middle of the US Open, where he has been busy coaching, Michael Joyce agreed to open up about what it was like to be scrutinized by the best writer of his generation, and also about competing against the very best tennis players of his generation while clearly not being one of them. All of which meant that the subject of this piece could finally scrutinize the author.

[Michael Joyce]

What happens all the time. Some random guy will be like, oh, hey, man, like, I got into tennis because of that David Foster Wallace. And, you know, I have people still every once in a while want me to sign the book and. And different stuff. And, you know, it's. And then, unfortunately, when he, you know, when he died, it like, everything tripled. You know, it was like years later. And then all of a sudden, after he passed away, I think it's when he be. Started to become even more famous. Absolutely. That's when people started to reach out to me more, and I'd hear about it even more. And so it's pretty amazing to look back. That was me through his story.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. At age 22, being profiled by a man who would, I think, only posthumously become appreciated in full as maybe the greatest tennis writer.

[Michael Joyce]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

You're in this collection of his works that I have been, as a fan of both sports and writing, pretty obsessed with, to the point where, like, you being here across from me is pretty cool.

[Michael Joyce]

It's crazy to think even my life back then, and, you know, we didn't have social media, we didn't have nothing like we have now. And even when it came out, I was in England like a year later playing Wimbledon, and I had to have my parents go to the store and find it and read it. Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

Wait, hold on. We gotta pause and start from the end.

[Michael Joyce]

I'll tell you the whole story.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. What do you remember about the first time you met David Foster Wallace?

[Michael Joyce]

Well, it's. It's interesting because I had just started to do pretty well. I think it was 1995.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Michael Joyce]

I got to the fourth round of Wimbledon.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, that's such a brave shot to play from the American at such a moment.

[Michael Joyce]

And I just reached top hundred. And then when I came home is. They have the tournaments like, they do now, like, D.C. canadian Open, you know, leading up to U.S. open. And I had to fly overnight, like all tennis players do, and then play qualifying the next day in Canada, in Montreal. And so I was playing, like, my first match, there was only maybe a handful of people there. And I remember it being really, like, warm, hot, like summer. And I saw this guy kind of sitting, like, on the side with, like, leg warmers and, like, a snow cap. You know, like hippie is guy. Because, you know, you're playing, you can kind of see who's around, if not.

[Pablo Torre]

A ton of people to watch. You and Dan Brock, right?

[Michael Joyce]

No, not at all. And I kind of was, like, thinking, oh, it's, you know, quick thought, this guy's. What's this guy doing here in the middle of summer and dressed in winter clothes.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Michael Joyce]

And I kept seeing the guy, but. But I didn't know who he was. And then finally, after I qualified, he came up to me and he's like, hey, Michael. He's like, you know, I'm. I doing this story on a young American tennis player who's really good, who's coming up. At the time, American tennis was really big. I mean, we had Agassi and Sampers and Chang and Jim Courier, Currier. We had so many, like, superstars.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, your generation.

[Michael Joyce]

I was. Yeah, our generation was incredible. Unbelievable, even. I think my career high was 62. And. And at probably at 62, I was like, the 10th best American.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, opposite of today.

[Michael Joyce]

Today it's getting better. I just saw that there's four Americans top 20. But if you look at, like, Roddick and Fish, like, those guys were great players, but there was only a few of them for years.

[Pablo Torre]

At the time that David Foster Wallace goes to visit you, there is sort of like this food chain. There's so many options on the menu for, like, up and coming, slash, great slash, relatively anonymous Americans.

[Michael Joyce]

I remember him telling me there was three good American coming up. It was myself, this guy, Tommy Ho, who was a great player. He had some injuries, but he won Kalamazoo when he was 15. And then this other guy named Chris Woodruff, who was from Tennessee, and we were all ranked around 80 coming up. And he felt that I had, like, the best personality or something. And he asked if I'd be willing to let him kind of just follow me around. And I said, sure. My coach was a really nice guy at the time. He writes about him in there.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, Sam Aparicio.

[Michael Joyce]

Yeah, Sam Aparicio. Right. And he became very close to Sam. But also, like, we Went out to dinner a couple times.

[Pablo Torre]

What's dinner? With David Foster Wallace?

[Michael Joyce]

And this is funny, I swear, for the first two days he wore the same thing. And because I remember these, like, socks that look like leg warmers. And he had the long hair and the, like, do rag. You know.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. The bandana, little durag. An iconic thing.

[Michael Joyce]

Exactly. Later on, I think when he approached me and everything, Sam started to read that infinite Jest. Like it had come out. But again, it wasn't like, well known. I. I took a look at it. I'm like, I'm. I couldn't even. I could do bicep curls with it.

[Pablo Torre]

Approximately a zillion pages.

[Michael Joyce]

Exactly. I'm like, where do I even stop? No interest.

[Pablo Torre]

One of the most towering works, literally, in fict. Figuratively, of American fiction, incidentally.

[Michael Joyce]

What happened is Details magazine had, like, contracted him to do this piece and then he had like a stipend or something.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, yeah, the mag.

[Michael Joyce]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

As a former magazine writer. Expense reports.

[Michael Joyce]

Exactly. So he was gonna get the most out of it. So I actually got to the point where I actually liked going to dinner with him because he would take us to some fancy steak place and, you.

[Pablo Torre]

Know, pay for veteran move by David's veteran.

[Michael Joyce]

Right. So he knew what he was doing. So he went to Montreal. I actually went back to la. There was a term in LA he didn't go to that because I ended up beating Jim Courier at the time. Right.

[Pablo Torre]

Your hometown.

[Michael Joyce]

My hometown. So that summer, part of why I think I remember everything so well is, like, that summer was like my breakout summer. And it just so happened to kind of be in conjunction with him doing the story. So it's pretty cool. And then I ended up going to New Haven was the week before U.S. open. The Volvo used to be. And he went there, and I remember going out to dinner with him, like, three times there because they had all the fish restaurants and crabs. We went to the pizza. But. But it was interesting because I never felt like he was interviewing me.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. So far, you guys are just eating a lot of food. We're just eating details.

[Michael Joyce]

We're eating food and he's following me around. And, you know, the only thing. Sometimes we'd be in the car and I, you know, mention something to Sam and he. And he would. All of a sudden, I. I found out later when I read a lot of the article how much he did, which I never really felt like he was even interviewing me or.

[Pablo Torre]

That's why this is so funny to hear you say this, because a great Magazine writer. And by the way, David Foster wa moonlighting as a magazine writer essentially because he can write these towering books, but he is basically practicing an art that can be otherwise pretty unremarkable. You know, like, you kind of go through the meat grinder of like, doing a lot of interviews. Okay, Magazine guys follow me around. But you read this piece and you're like, yeah. The entire time, I imagine he is observing you in a way that you had no idea.

[Michael Joyce]

Yeah, I had no idea. And obviously when it came out and I read it, that was what I, I've said a few times. Like, actually, at the time when it came out, I really didn't like it. You know, I didn't like it only because of what we're just talking about. Like, you know, he'd asked me about girls, like, or something, or girlfriend. And I would just be, you know, at dinner and I'd be, you know, just talking normal conversation. Then he comes with like four pages of talking about me being a virgin and stuff. Right? Which actually worked out pretty good at the time because all the girls that read it were like, you know, hey, let's, let's, let's take care of this. Or so. So he actually did me some favors at the time.

[Pablo Torre]

That's incredible.

[Michael Joyce]

No, but like, it was hard for me to kind of take in at the time. Like, how I almost felt like, violated in a way. Well, this is at the time.

[Pablo Torre]

So I'm fascinated on all of these levels, truly, because as a magazine writer, I always am sort of calculating. Like, okay, what am I going to tell the subject about what I'm going to write? And this is what David Foster Wallace ends up writing about you. If I can just read you some of the description he wrote. Quote, the quickest way to describe him would be to say that he looks like a young and slightly buff David Caruso. He is fair skinned and has reddish hair and the kind of patchy, vaguely pubic goatee of somebody who isn't quite old enough yet to grow real facial hair. When he plays in the heat, he wears a hat. He wears Fila clothes and uses Yonex rackets and is paid to do so. His face is childishly full, and though it isn't freckled, it somehow looks like it ought to be freckled. And as I sit across from you, I'm like, I could see that. I could see that. And then he goes on to say about the aforementioned virginity, which is, which is again, like, like, this is a bold paragraph. Quote, he's dated some it's impossible to tell whether he's a virgin. It seems staggering and impossible, but my sense is that he might be. Then again, I tend to idealize and distort him. I know because of how I feel about what he can do on a tennis court. His most revealing sexual comment was made in the context of explaining the odd type of confidence that keeps him from freezing up in a match in front of large crowds or choking on a point when there's lots of money at stake. Joyce, who usually needs to pause about five beats to think before he answers questions, thinks the confidence is partly a matter of temperament and partly a function of hard work and practice. And then he quotes you saying this. If I'm in like a bar and there's a really good looking girl, I might be kind of nervous. But if there's like a thousand gorgeous girls in the stands when I'm playing, it's a different story. I'm not nervous then when I play because I know what I'm doing. I know what to do out there. End quote.

[Michael Joyce]

As time went on and I read it again, and then eventually I think about eight or nine years later when it came out in the book that, yeah, the coastly fun thing, and it was a longer version of it, I read the whole thing and I was like, man, this guy is amazing.

[Pablo Torre]

As an interviewer, I cannot speak to David Foster Wallace. Your experience suggests that he was even more of an observer than he was a conversationalist. But what he says about Agassi, I mean, and this is something he does with, I think a real, like, admiration.

[Michael Joyce]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

For you in the end, for Agassi, who. He says that you guys had practiced together, you and Agassiz.

[Michael Joyce]

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And so he's sort of like sees himself as truly an outsider to these people. You and Agassi, as far apart as you are, you are still inside of this, this universe of professional tennis that he very unsparingly describes as totally alien to him. Despite being a high ranking, he loved tennis player himself.

[Michael Joyce]

Yeah, he, he, I think that's part of what got him to do it and everything that he, you could tell he loved tennis. He loved the sport. He played. He would never, I never saw him play. I even asked him a few times when I was practicing, he'd be on the side. Oh, you want to hit a few balls? Which most people would be like, yeah, of course he didn't. He refused to do it.

[Pablo Torre]

This is what he says about the idea of playing. You just even hitting the ball around. He says Quote, the idea of me playing Joyce or even hitting around with him, which was one of the ideas I was entertaining on the flight to Montreal, is now revealed to me to be in a certain way obscene. And I resolved to not even let Joyce know that I used to play competitive tennis.

[Michael Joyce]

No, I didn't know exactly.

[Pablo Torre]

And I'd presumed rather. Well, I'd presumed an embarrassing, self effacing, parenthetical. And I'd presumed rather. Well, this makes me sad is what he says. And he goes on, I could not meaningfully exist on the same court with these obscure, hungry players. Nor could you. And it's not just a matter of talent or practice. There's something else.

[Michael Joyce]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

And that's something else which he sort of, you know, again, it's hard not to see this with the full benefit of hindsight.

[Michael Joyce]

Sure.

[Pablo Torre]

But he's talking about psychology.

[Michael Joyce]

Yes. Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

He's talking about the commitment that you made as a kid.

[Michael Joyce]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

To a, a sport that can be pretty clearly deeply lonely.

[Michael Joyce]

Sure.

[Pablo Torre]

Let alone difficult.

[Michael Joyce]

If you look at like nowadays, you know, I was just out at U. S Open yesterday and you watch like these qualifying players and the average, like average fan or people don't really give them enough credit because they're not playing in the main U.S. open or they're, you know, somebody ranked 200 or even the challengers. And you realize how good these women and men are and, and how close of a difference between being Alcaraz and being some, somebody nobody knows that's even 200 in the world or 300, whatever, or the college players. And I think that's kind of what he probably, you know, referring to there. I mean, the same with me, like, I was a very good player. I played similar to Agassi. He, you know, he helped me some. He's four years older than me, but my game was kind of very similar to his. And, and on a certain day or in practice I could play right with him. But then, you know, Agassi was Agassi, and I'm, you know, I was, I have to work after playing tennis, so.

[Pablo Torre]

And you're a, you're a vaguely pubic goatee, Dave Caruso lookalike.

[Michael Joyce]

And then you have a bunch of people that looked at me like that. Right. And so you have like the levels and what, what really separates it, what, what makes it like, why are some better than others? Why are some superstars and others aren't? To come out in writing and explain that it's obviously his genius.

[Pablo Torre]

He says that your focus, your level of intensity he describes it as the same pleasantly grim expression you see on say, working surgeons or jewelers.

[Michael Joyce]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

The level of, of dedication that does date back to when you were a little kid.

[Michael Joyce]

Sure, yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, if you could describe just what the backstory is to what it takes to be in that crevice between AAA and the majors. It seems like it's, it's just unfathomably consuming.

[Michael Joyce]

Yeah, I think, I think part of what, when I, when I mentioned that I re read the article at first and I didn't really like it that much because it was so truthful. I mean, now that I'm older and I've been around for a long time, you know, even 25 years ago, I started to appreciate it, whatever. But now when I look back, what great players do and even myself and good play is like how, when you're playing or training or like how present you are. And I learned that really young. Like when I step on the tennis court, it was like a sanctuary for me. Like I, I knew I was good. That's probably goes to the comment about the girls and stuff. Like, you know, I wasn't even focused on, you know, you're focusing on hitting the tennis ball, playing, and that's like everything. And you have ultimate confidence that you're doing that because you've done it since you were a kid. It's like learning how to walk.

[Pablo Torre]

And he points out, again, I'm just going to keep quoting David Foster Wallace here, which is, I think, a fairly safe move when it comes to just making myself feel smarter than I am. Quote, the realities of the men's professional tennis tour bear about as much resemblance to the lush finals you see on TV as a slaughterhouse does to a well presented cut of restaurant sirloin. Which I think now I see the backstory of all of these steak metaphors given.

[Michael Joyce]

Yeah, that's right. Good point.

[Pablo Torre]

But he says, you know, you could think of Michael Joyce's career as now kind of on the cusp between the majors and triple A ball.

[Michael Joyce]

Right, right.

[Pablo Torre]

The idea that in this crevice between the stuff, you know, on television and this almost hidden world of, of deeply competitive high level tennis are all of these characters. It's something that I didn't appreciate, embarrassingly until I read the story and I was like, oh, I kind of get it now. I'm now more curious about what's in here.

[Michael Joyce]

The ball doesn't lie, they say. I mean, if you win matches, you're gonna get up there. If you don't, you're probably not. You don't really always know the backstory of how they get there. Everybody's different, obviously. Everybody from different countries and tennis being like one on one sport, you know, nobody can tell you where you can play, not play. And so the amount of steps that a normal player goes through to actually get to a point where they're making a living is incredible.

[Pablo Torre]

Something that comes through in your description just now is. Is the way in which your happiness seems intertwined, for sure, with how you're doing, for sure. Which can be, by the way, both incredibly rewarding if you find a way to stick in the game and to find a fulfilling career path, as you clearly have as a coach now still very active in the game. But it's also the thing that's tormenting, I think, for people who don't get to do that.

[Michael Joyce]

It's a hard transition. I've had pretty good luck. I mean, most of the players I work with, it's from, like, when they're young, kind of transitioning to, like, the pros. And it's such a difficult time because you take like a young girl or a guy who's really good if they're good enough to come from the juniors, maybe go to college for a year, maybe go straight to the pros if they're good enough to do that. They're used to winning all the time. And now all of a sudden you go on the pros and you're losing every week. You know, I'm sure it's like that in all sports. If you're, you know, a kid and you're good and you're, you're, you're learning that if you're winning or playing well or winning, then everybody's happy. Everything's.

[Pablo Torre]

It's not just your happiness.

[Michael Joyce]

It's actually kind of sick. You know, let's be honest.

[Pablo Torre]

I was about to say it's sick. You're training a child to understand that the happiness of his loved ones and, and their love for him is almost conditional on whether they're winning or not.

[Michael Joyce]

Absolutely. But at the end of the day, that's kind of like it's your life. And it, and, and everything you know is that's your life till you're probably 30 or maybe even later now 35.

[Pablo Torre]

I would imagine that, you know, something, something someone once told me about just, you know, when your ego is jeopardized and you no longer can believe the story that you tell yourself about yourself, that crevice between AAA and the majors can feel like a A bottomless canyon that you're just falling into.

[Michael Joyce]

In my case, I remember being like, 22 and doing really good. I'm like 60 in the world. Like, look back. I was. It should have been the happiest time of my life. Well, that's an emphatic tie break from Michael Joyce. But it really wasn't in a lot of ways, because now people are, like, looking at you, they're judging you. You're just used to winning. You think you're great. Now all of a sudden, you're not good at this. And it's even harder now because the social media and stuff, the players get.

[Pablo Torre]

Like, yeah, this was. We're talking about you in the mid-90s.

[Michael Joyce]

I can't even imagine how hard it is now.

[Pablo Torre]

You know, David Foster Wallace goes on to describe you in a way that sort of reflects his evolving understanding of you as he's hearing you talk about this stuff now, 30 years ago. But he says, quote, you couldn't even call him sincere because it's not like it seems ever to occur to him to try to be sincere or non sincere. For a while, I thought that Joyce's rather bland candor was a function of his not being very bright. This judgment was partly informed by the fact that Joyce didn't go to college and was only marginally involved in his high school academics stuff. I know because he told me right away. What I discovered as the tournament wore on was that I can be kind of a snob and an. And that Michael Joyce's effectless openness is not a sign of stupidity but of something else. What is that something else?

[Michael Joyce]

That's a really interesting statement because I remember clear as day, because that was one of the first things that I. That I read that I didn't like. I heard that first and I'm like, oh, who's this jerk? You know, whatever. And then as time went on, I actually, like, loved it because I like to tell the truth. And so as a tennis, too, like, if. If I had coaches, I always appreciate the ones that kind of told me the truth, even if it wasn't always what you wanted to hear. And so at that time, I remember specifically when he'd asked me these questions and different stuff or he saw I was always pretty truthful about, like, where I thought I was or where I was going, because it was always related to tennis.

[Pablo Torre]

Wallace also is in this piece describing people, other tennis stars, in a way that is just unparalleled. So there's, again, I don't know how you feel about these passages or if you have relationships with, you know, John McEnroe, for instance. But he says McEnroe was an exception to pretty much every predictive norm there was. At his peak, say, 1980 to 1984, he was the greatest tennis player who ever lived. The most talented, the most beautiful, the most tormented, A genius. For me, watching McEnroe don a blue polyester blazer and do stiff, lame, truistic color commentary for TV is like watching Faulkner do a Gap ad.

[Michael Joyce]

I don't actually think I remember that one or read it, but he's right.

[Pablo Torre]

And I just want to again quote Wallace here about Agassi, who, and this is just makes me laugh, honestly. He says Agassiz facial expression is the slightly smug, self aware one of somebody who's used to being looked at and who automatically assumes the minute he shows up anywhere that everybody's looking at him. He's incredible to see play in person. But his domination of Washington he was watching this match. Doesn't make me like him any better. It's more like it chills me as if I'm watching the devil play Agassi as this figure in this Venn diagram of your interests, Wallace's and yours, as well as like the patron saint almost of grinders.

[Michael Joyce]

Sure, yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Explain that dynamic and why he is revered in this context.

[Michael Joyce]

I remember also, and I've had some people talk to me about this article. So when you watch, like Djokovic play against a guy who's unbelievably good, but maybe he's 60 in the world, let's just say, you know, most of the time that player who's better, they're a little bit. See the ball a little bit quicker, maybe get to the ball a little bit earlier, create a little bit better angle because of that split second that they're moving up to the ball return of serve. So because of that, it makes them more consistent. And so what he was trying to explain, which I felt always playing Agassi, was that, like, it was almost like I felt like I was playing kind of like myself because our games were similar. He just had a little better timing, a little better, you know, saw the ball a little bit earlier, which then ultimately maybe gave him more confidence, which, you know, and, and all of those little 1% here, 1% there, that adds up to like 10%. So you lose 6, 3, 6, 4 or something. Right. And. And you can't really, like, no matter how hard I worked or no matter what I could have done different, or no matter Sometimes it's just confidence.

[Pablo Torre]

Wallace describes Agassi as amazingly absent of finesse. And he describes here the power baseline sort of style, which you also.

[Michael Joyce]

Yeah, I mean, Agassi had pretty good touch. I did, too, but. But again, it's one of those things too. Like, we didn't use it maybe especially Agnes didn't use it as much as he could have because it wasn't going to help him. Or like you have that split second where you know, you're going to take this ball, you're going to rip it, you know, you're just going to do it. Right. So that's kind of like sometimes it's just you go with what's your instinct, you know, you're playing like, on automatic pilot kind of thing.

[Pablo Torre]

Right, right. But the idea of just, like, you're there to grind down your opponent.

[Michael Joyce]

Right. Which Agassi felt like.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. And that, you know, you're not, in that case prioritizing the esthetics of how you're doing it.

[Michael Joyce]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

But, you know, again, I remember playing.

[Michael Joyce]

Agassi the first time in D.C. actually, right before he started writing this. I lost 6262 and. And I won like four or three matches there. And I remember the next day I felt like I got hit by a truck because he made me move that much more. Everything was happening faster, you know, I'm sure that's what it feels like to play Alcaraz and these guys. Right. So you almost felt like, like punished, like he was going to wear you down, you know, Sampras was totally different. Sampras was easy to play, but in a way, like, physically. But then you couldn't return a serve because he could hit an ace at any time. So at least with Sampers, you, like, knew, like, it was going to be pretty close. You probably wouldn't win, but it's going to be pretty close. Agassi could make you look like a F on the court.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes, yes. He describes Wallace does Agassi as akin to the old Soviet Union putting down a rebellion. Just this almost like heavy metal kind of aspect to just being destroyed.

[Michael Joyce]

He's. He's spot on with everything.

[Pablo Torre]

How he describes you as a paradox. Do you remember this part at all?

[Michael Joyce]

I remember, and when I first read, I had no idea what paradox even meant. I think that was what I remember being in England. I think my parents faxed over the.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Michael Joyce]

So give me.

[Pablo Torre]

Give me the story of you actually.

[Michael Joyce]

First getting this after he did the whole article and everything. It was a couple months later. And I remember he called me up and he was really down. He's like, hey, Mike. He's like, you know, details, decided not to run the piece. He's like, he didn't really even get into. I'm like, oh, that sucks. You know, you spent a lot of. He's like, but I'm gonna, like, shop it around and see if somebody will pick it up, if that's okay with it. I'm like, sure, man. You know, whatever. And so I kind of almost, like, forgot about it and about literally, like a year later. No, I actually remember it was in, like, in the spring because I. I had just like, shaved my head. This is how you remember these things, right? And I got a call before even hearing from him, I got a call from this lady who was like, hey, we need to send a photographer. I was in Birmingham, Alabama, and can we do a photo shoot for Esquire? And I'm like, who's this lady? And then. And then that same day, he called me and said Esquire was going to run the article. And I was like, damn, man, I just shaved my head. Whatever. And so they did like a shoot, like in the magazine. There's pictures of me, like, serving and different stuff. And I remember they shot it in Birmingham, and then the article came out while I was at Queens Club in England, because I knew it was going to come out like in June or something, they said. But again, like, it was only in the. I think in the US or I don't know if Esquire was worldwide. Whatever. But I remember my mom went to the grocery store, I think for like a few days. I'm like, go to this store. Because I had no idea what it was like. I mean, I knew it was an.

[Pablo Torre]

Article, but the mid-90s. Yeah. There's nowhere.

[Michael Joyce]

I didn't know if it was a five, two page thing.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Michael Joyce]

One paragraph.

[Pablo Torre]

You didn't know it would be the greatest tennis essay of all time.

[Michael Joyce]

Right. I had no idea. So I remember my mom called me and again, we didn't have cell ph, man. You know, so I'm calling home every couple days, whatever. And I remember my mom, like, picked up, went to the store and. And found it was like, in the magazine department. And she picked it up and she opened and she was shocked. She's like, Mike, there's 22 pages. I'm like, what? She's like, you're all over the thing you open.

[Pablo Torre]

There are 40 foot mic.

[Michael Joyce]

What? Yeah. And. And I was. Yeah. She was like, we hadn't Even read it. And then they were coming over to, to watch me at Wimbledon. And so for like two weeks, I, I didn't even, even. Maybe she read a few things or whatever, but she broug. So Wimbledon is where I read it. And I remember reading and I was like, what the is this? Like, like this is ridiculous. And my coach, and my coach was like, Sam?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Michael Joyce]

How does Sam handle your, what did he call him? The Mexican Dustin Hoffman or something? I don't know, for something. It was so funny, but it was exactly right. Was like he was the most calm, never gets stressed, nicest man ever. Like more of even a better man than like a tennis coach. And, and I traveled my first pro tournaments with him when I was 16. I knew him. He hit with me when I was like seven. So I remember he calmed me down. He's like, michael, it's really good. Like it's real. I'm like, what is he talking about? He's saying I'm a virgin. He doesn't know I called you Hispanic Dustin Hoffmanic dust.

[Pablo Torre]

I got cubes on my face.

[Michael Joyce]

Exactly right? And you could tell he likes Sam. Yeah. I'm like, oh, he loves that. You loved it. Of course you like this article Dustin Hoffman, you know, And I'm like, this guy's saying I'm grotesque. You know, it's so, you know, but that's the paragraph.

[Pablo Torre]

He says, he calls you a paradox.

[Michael Joyce]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And he talks about how the restrictions on his life have been in my opinion, grotesque.

[Michael Joyce]

Sure. And he's 100% right. But at the time I didn't know better. And this is my life and this is, I'm trying to like accomplish something here. Like to me my life was normal. Right. And now that I look back, especially now I have an 8 year old daughter and I now I look and I'm like, like, would I choose this life? People ask me a lot, like, do I want my daughter to play tennis? I really don't. Like, if she wants to play and have fun and she goes out, that's fin, Fine. But do I really want her? Because the, the people, the 2 per 1% that people see that are winning great things, I mean, and doing, making a ton of money. But a lot of those people struggle too, because it's their whole life. So, you know, for me, I remember reading this article and then, and then it was interesting because I, you know, I learned to embrace it, whatever, but, but again, it wasn't thrown around like it would be now because now it's on social media like you actually had to get the magazine, read the magazine.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Michael Joyce]

I think my parents bought like 10 of them. We have them.

[Pablo Torre]

There was no viral, no thing about at all.

[Michael Joyce]

And then. And then like a few years later when it came out on the book, it was the same kind of thing. Oh, it's cool. You can go get a book now. I think it's probably. If people go back and read. I mean, even your show will probably bring people to read it and then it's going to pop up again in 2020.

[Pablo Torre]

There was, you know, this. There was a dance piece.

[Michael Joyce]

Oh, my God. My wife showed me that one. Yeah, yeah. Like a ballet or something, right?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. I will quote the description. The Qualys was the name of the piece. It was.

[Michael Joyce]

It's insane.

[Pablo Torre]

It was. Here we go. Fluor, I believe, is how you pronounce that. Fluor Darken is the choreographer, I suppose, the artistic director. She has taken, quote, the seminal US writer David Foster Wallace's groundbreaking study of the American tennis player Michael Joyce, and brought it to life as a dance for four men. 32 minutes. And this is about you.

[Michael Joyce]

Wow, that's. Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

But to go back to the paradox thing and the grotesque thing, because you had this, this, this grotesque, intense, all consuming approach to greatness in tennis since you were 7, 8 years old. It enabled you to do something that is beautiful, which has become, as he says, a transcendent practitioner of an art. And so in the grotesqueness of your life, there is this beauty. And I just can't help but think of David Foster Wallace in a similar way.

[Michael Joyce]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

You know, with. With the full benefit of hindsight now that the thing that he was so great at, to the point where we're still reading and I'm quoting him and we're laughing and really we are in awe of his, of his work, is because it seemed like on some level he had a similar all consuming approach to the way that writing mattered to him.

[Michael Joyce]

It's true. I mean, I think later in his life he taught. It was funny. He ended up going, I think, Whittier College and teaching there, which is funny because I was from la. He was from. I think he was from Illinois or something when I met him.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Michael Joyce]

And then the fact that he went out and it was interesting too, is that he was in Whittier, I think, for about 10 years. And he never really contacted me.

[Pablo Torre]

I was gonna ask.

[Michael Joyce]

No.

[Pablo Torre]

Did you guys ever talk?

[Michael Joyce]

No. It was really weird because I know he. I found out later that he had actually reached out to Sam like a Couple times.

[Pablo Torre]

But that was it for Michael Joyce. To David Foster Wallace, that was it. Wallace had always seemed more comfortable around Michael's coach, Sam Aparicio, instead of Michael himself, this player that Wallace, again, could not meaningfully exist on the same court with. But what Wallace would have learned if he had reached out to Michael Joyce sometime in the mid 2000s is that his former subject had transcended his previous station as a player. Because one day in 2001, in a match against Michael Chang, another major champion from this generation, Michael Joyce, had suddenly ruptured a tendon in his already janky left wrist and could no longer feel his left hand, which led to surgery and almost two miserable years of rehab, after which his world ranking plummeted and plummeted down into the 130s. And when Michael's mother got diagnosed with cancer at age 49, her son decided to be with her at home in Los Angeles and finally get off tour. Which is all to say that by September 2008, when the world heard that David Foster Wallace was gone, out of nowhere, Michael Joyce was doing what both Sam Aparicio and Professor Wallace had been doing. Michael had found his new, even greater calling as a teacher. Or, in other words, a coach.

[Michael Joyce]

I know when he passed away, I was coaching Sharapova Maria, and I was in the middle of it. So she had already, like, you know, won US Open and Wimbledon, and so she was a big star. So he must have seen me as her coach. And the fact that he didn't actually ever ask for tickets or come to the match or write me or, like, it showed kind of what kind of person he was, in a way, because I was. Especially at that point, I became almost a lot more famous being Maria's coach than I had of being a player.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Michael Joyce]

So I had people always con, you know, contacting me or writing me or, you know, people from my past who, you know, whatever, would always come forward and want to see me or want something. And the fact that he never, like, I lived literally 45 miles away, and I didn't. I never felt like he did that because he didn't like me or something. He just respected what I did, did and what I was doing. And he didn't really want to reach out. I felt like that was. I mean, out of a hundred people, one person, and it was him that would do that. Because when he finally passed, when he passed away, I remember I was kind of, like, shocked.

[Pablo Torre]

You know, people started, how did you find out?

[Michael Joyce]

It was crazy, actually. I actually had a blood Clot. I was with Maria. We were in Arizona. She was recovering from shoulder surgery and every Friday we would do like. I'd go to therapy with her for shoulder. And we were at one of these Arizona places and a lot of athletes there and we used to do like fun like this Olympics where all the athletes would jump over hurdles and all of a sudden she'd always want me to do it with her. And so I did it on like Friday. And that particular year she was coming to the US Open because it was like a five year anniversary of her winning or something. And I decided to drive home to la. And so I drove seven hours without stopping. I just went straight through. And when I got to la, I had this like that night I had a cramp in my leg and it turned out I had like a. One of those blood clots in, in my calf, which I didn't know. I thought I pulled a muscle or something. I ended up going to the hospital. And make a long story short, I was actually in the hospital recovering from this blood clot when the news came out that he, you know, passed away. And then within like 12 hours, I had literally like 50 people contacting me because of him passing away. The article was thrown all over the Internet, but I remember sitting there saying to like a couple people visiting me. I was like, this is crazy. Like first of all, I'm in the hospital, let alone I'm getting. So I had. I wasn't working or anything, so I was looking at my phone at that point. We had phone. And I'm like getting message after message. Can you talk about him and this? And then obviously the way he did it, you know, it was just like for a week. It was just overwhelming, kind of.

[Pablo Torre]

I did not realize that you were in the hospital yourself.

[Michael Joyce]

It was one in a million.

[Pablo Torre]

It just suggests. Look, I. I don't know.

[Michael Joyce]

I know how.

[Pablo Torre]

It's crazy, isn't it? Sometimes the universe just sort of signals something and I don't know what to make of it, except for the fact that in this case we've just had a conversation about psychology and about the way in which a grotesque life can lead to beauty.

[Michael Joyce]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

As well as when it's not in check. When you are dealing with mental health issues. An ending that can. Can be tragic.

[Michael Joyce]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

And when David Foster Wallace kills himself, he hangs himself in 2008. And this is a headline that in the world of certainly literature and journalism was this asteroid that just hit the planet. I didn't realize that you were in a hospital confronting In a sense, your mortality. And also contemplating the guy who had the most unsparing psychological examination of you.

[Michael Joyce]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

At the same time, it's crazy.

[Michael Joyce]

And I hadn't even thought of him or thought of it. You know, I'm in the. In the midst of coaching the number one player in the world, and she's recovering from shoulder. And we had a couple months, and she had surgeries. It was literally had to be about the week of the US Open. And then I sat there in the hospital bed for like, a day or two thinking, like, man, like, first of all, it made me feel, you know, as a coach, you put kind of your past. Like, when you're coaching, you put your player first. Everything. I mean, you know, you. You kind of have to be good, be a good coach. Especially on the road, you know, if you're teaching a kid an hour or whatever, it's a little different. But when you're traveling, you know, you put your family to Sisi as a coach, you kind of put that person ahead of you or even loved ones a lot of times, the good ones do, you know, which again, it's kind of a grotesque thing in a way, but it's what you do, right? So at that point, I had Marie. It was all about me coaching Maria, and I was a coach. And then. And then all of a sudden, when this. When that happened, it made me, for like, a couple days think about myself again and my past and this. And. And to think, like, nobody really saw this coming of him. He was teaching classes, like, a day before. Like, it was really, like, a really weird time in my life, to say the least. I mean.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Michael Joyce]

I mean, even now, thinking about it, I. A lot of that stuff, you kind of, like, took just block out in a way and move on. But that is kind of a coincidence that that happened.

[Pablo Torre]

Did you have any sense at all that mental health was a thing that David Foster Wallace had been dealing with?

[Michael Joyce]

Zero. I mean, like I said from the beginning, he was. I. I hate to say the. You weird would use the word like a weird guy, but, you know, that would be like my. Like, a really nice guy. The fact that he could come out with such an unbelievable piece and not really feel like he was even. He was never even writing anything down. Like, he wasn't sitting there with a pad. You know, you have people interviewer. He never even, like, walked around. Like, I don't even know when he did it. Like, it was just all going in his head. He was seeing my interviews, the car. Yes. You know, maybe when he was sitting by himself, he'd write some notes or something, but he never around me had a pad, he didn't have a tape recorder. You know, some of the, back then they had the little. None of that. So it was all his, you know, it was all like done on, on cue kind of that he could go back and write this. And I, and I know he was disappointed when they, they detail that.

[Pablo Torre]

By the way, just what I found out today. One of the worst decisions in the history of the written word is Details magazine passing of this.

[Michael Joyce]

Can you imagine? Exactly. And I remember them, he said that it was like they, he felt it was like too deep for their, their audience. You know, they were more like kind of young adult. Sure, whatever. But still, can you imagine? They could still be going.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, it's just, it's just, it's, it's a crazy thing.

[Michael Joyce]

It's crazy.

[Pablo Torre]

You know, when I was looking at the testimony from people who knew David Foster Wallace the best, the most sort of intimate friends in his life, something that I heard someone say, a friend of his, about why his life ended in the way it did amid all these frustrations and the things that you always, I think, feel if you're a friend of somebody who takes their own life. He says that David Foster Wallace felt like he couldn't write anymore.

[Friend or Colleague of David Foster Wallace]

I mean, he couldn't write anymore for whatever set of reasons. And if he can't write, you know, marriage, being someone's son, being someone's brother.

[Interviewer/Commentator]

Do some charity work.

[Friend or Colleague of David Foster Wallace]

Well, I'm not judging him. I'm just saying for him that ceased. That wasn't enough Velcro to keep him on the planet.

[Pablo Torre]

And that the last piece he wrote actually was this piece about Roger Federer, another tennis story, another all time tennis story.

[Friend or Colleague of David Foster Wallace]

So he couldn't write anymore. The Federer piece was the last time that his ass left the chair, as he used to put it. That the writing was so inspired that he no longer felt, felt, you know, his butt in a chair as he.

[Pablo Torre]

Wrote it was transcendent again, that word, this transcendent experience in which his ass left the chair. He was sort of levitating. It was this sort of like communion that you had with the universe.

[Friend or Colleague of David Foster Wallace]

And then it's sort of the UFO stopped coming. He could no longer see. This thing arrived. It changed everything. So he couldn't write.

[Pablo Torre]

And that without that ability, without the ability to write a story, let alone believe the story that maybe he told himself about himself, it just didn't feel like it was enough.

[Friend or Colleague of David Foster Wallace]

And of course People who were close to him would hope that would say, what about this reason? What about this reason? What about the people who personally care about you? And it just didn't end up being enough.

[Interviewer/Commentator]

Next question over there.

[Pablo Torre]

And at the end here, what I'm really, like, getting back around to is how he ended the piece. Do you remember how he ends the piece?

[Michael Joyce]

No.

[Pablo Torre]

So I'll just read it to you. Joyce is, in other words, a complete man. Yeah, I remember now, though, in a grotesquely limited way. But he wants more. He wants to be the best, to have his name known, to hold professional trophies over his head as he patiently turns in all four directions for the media. He wants this and will pay to have it, to pursue it, let it define him, and will pay up with the regretless cheer of a man for whom issues of choice became irrelevant a long time ago. Go already. For Joyce, at 22, it's too late for anything else. He's invested too much, is in too deep. I think he's both lucky and unlucky. He will say he is happy and mean it. Wish him well.

[Michael Joyce]

I remember clearly now. Yeah. And again, that's something that now, with all the experience I've had, I can. I can look and say he's spot on. When I look back at, like, tennis, especially my upbringing, it was like, all I knew, it was what? You know, it was more important in a way that I went and hit practice my serve and hit the spot 10 times than it was getting an A on a report or whatever. It's funny. I'll tell you a real quick story. When I was coaching Maria, I remember her winning U.S. open here. And that night, after she won, we went out for an hour, had some drinks, whatever, had, like, like, celebrate. And then a couple days later, we. I was home for three or four days. And then you have, like, a week, and then you. We were going to Europe to play, and I remember her dad called me, and I. And her dad's like, hey, how you doing? I'm like, oh, I'm good. She. And I'm like, how you doing? He's like, yeah, I'm kind of depressed. And I'm like, yeah, I am, too. It's crazy, like, because you all of a sudden reach the mountaintop, but it keeps going in a way.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Michael Joyce]

Like, if you were, like, 13 and you won a tournament and you're all celebrating, this is great. We did it. You of a sudden, you're never going to be that good. Right. And it's the same if you lose it's like end of the world. So the, the best are able to kind of maintain that. And I think that's kind of his closing is like that. Like, that's, that's your goal. You want to hold trophies, this and that, but it's also part of your life, and it's what you do.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. It is remarkable that despite everything, everything that's difficult about this, what you and he both seem to agree on very clearly is something else that he says. Another famous line that he wrote, which is that he submits that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is and.

[Michael Joyce]

Also the most demanding from physicality standpoint. It's definitely one of the hardest because you're. You got to play day after day, recover. You don't have teammates, the mental side, you. You don't. You can't take a seat for five minutes if you're struggling or, you know, it's five on the third and you're dying. You can't have somebody fill in for you, you know, your wins and losses that you take with yourself. And maybe a couple, your couple, your parents and your coach or whatever, a couple people, you know, probably the closest thing maybe would be like, boxing or something, but then they're fighting every three months or four months, not every single day. So I think that's why tennis is so beautiful, because it's so incredibly hard, you know, like the pickleball. Now everybody's going nuts about pickleball. And I think it's great that, like, old people can play pickleball or whatever, but it's like, to me, it's like playing mini tennis. Like, it's easy. That's why people like it, right? And it's fun. I mean, it's great that people can do that, but you can never even put in the universe of tennis because it's something that's easy. So something that's very difficult, I think, is what makes people respect it.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Yeah. Michael J. I'd love to see David.

[Michael Joyce]

Foster, what he's doing about pickleball.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, God, yes. Among the many he could do.

[Michael Joyce]

An unbelievable story.

[Pablo Torre]

I wish David Paul Foster Wallace was alive to chronicle pickleball suddenly. Absolutely on the list. Michael Joyce, as you go out to go, continue to compete and live and breathe a beautiful and difficult thing. I wish you well.

[Michael Joyce]

Thank you, Pablo.

[Pablo Torre]

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out a Meadowlark Media production and I'll talk to you next time.